That the world is getting older is one of the most visible trends in recent times.  Concerns have been raised, however, that while we are generally living longer, we may not be having a greater number of healthy years.  New research from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland suggests those fears may be somewhat unfounded.

The study suggests that the functional ability of older people is better now than it was a few decades ago.  The research compared both the cognitive and physical performance of people aged between 75 and 80 with people of a similar age in the 1990s.

“Performance-based measurements describe how older people manage in their daily life, and at the same time, the measurements reflect one’s functional age,” the researchers say.

Functional health

The analysis revealed that across a wide range of measures, including walking and reaction speed, verbal fluency, muscle strength, working memory, and reasoning ability, older people today performed better than their peers from the previous generation.

“Higher physical activity and increased body size explained the better walking speed and muscle strength among the later-born cohort,” the researchers explain, “whereas the most important underlying factor behind the cohort differences in cognitive performance was longer education.”

The researchers highlight that older people today benefit from a number of beneficial changes, including better nutrition and hygiene, improvements in healthcare and education, and an improved working life.

Their findings suggest that the increases we’ve seen in life expectancy are being accompanied by an increased number of years with good functional ability in our later life.  This is largely due to the slower rate of change as we age, and particularly a higher lifetime maximum in terms of our physical performance.

“The results suggest that our understanding of older age is old-fashioned,” the researchers conclude. “From an aging researcher’s point of view, more years are added to midlife, and not so much to the utmost end of life. Increased life expectancy provides us with more non-disabled years, but at the same time, the last years of life comes at higher and higher ages, increasing the need for care. Among the ageing population, two simultaneous changes are happening: continuation of healthy years to higher ages and an increased number of very old people who need external care.”